The Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships, research recently released by the church-consulting organization Communio, reports that “family decline appears to fuel faith decline.”
According to the study, individuals who regularly attend church are more likely to have fathers present in their lives.
In the U.S., approximately 80% of Sunday churchgoers were raised in homes where their biological parents were married to each other throughout their upbringing.
Additionally, the study confirms that “boys who grew up in homes with married parents are considerably more likely to attend church regularly as adults.”
Communio President J.P. DeGance, who contributed to the study, told The Christian Post that young people are not leaving churches in large numbers because of a lack of ministry outreach. Quoting now:
“We’ve never spent more money in the history of the church to transmit our faith to our young people, and yet they’re falling away at higher and higher numbers.”
DeGance added, “Unless we get deeply effective and strategic about increasing the number of Christian marriages and young people raised in homes with faithful and healthy Christian families, we’re going to continue to see an increase in religious non-affiliation.”
DeGance warned that if the Church doesn’t take drastic steps to “evangelize fruitfully in the 21st century, the declining number of marriages will continue and marital health will remain low.”